I adjusted the ratios somewhat for this one. We had twice as much chicken as the recipe called for, so I doubled the marinade and bumped up the rice slightly¹. However, we were a bit light on mushrooms, so they were scaled back a bit. And we'd just harvested a bunch of silverbeet (chard) out of the garden a couple of days ago, so I didn't want to try to take any more yet. This left me trying to swap in frozen chopped spinach. Which was fine, but I didn't want to overdo it, so I just put in a relatively small amount.

The final result was tasty, but I do think that it would have been better with more mushrooms and greens (and a bit more salt). All of these changes are reflected in the write-up below.

Ginger Rice with Chicken and Mushrooms

Slightly adapted from Dish of the Day by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

• 4 skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 Tbsp. ginger paste
• 2 Tbsp. oyster sauce
• 2 Tbsp. dark soy sauce²
• 2 Tbsp. Shaoxing wine (绍兴酒)
• 2 tsp. sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp. Chinese five-spice powder
• 1 Tbsp. oil (optional)
• 1 onion, chopped (optional)
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced (optional)
• 2 c. jasmine rice
• 4 c. water
• 400-500g Swiss chard (silverbeet) and/or kale, chopped
• 250g mushrooms (preferably a mix of shiitake and cremini), sliced
• 2-3 green onions, sliced

Directions

1. Combine chicken, ginger, oyster sauce, soy sauce, wine, sesame oil, and five-spice powder and mix well. Set aside for 10-20 minutes.
2. If using onion and garlic, heat the oil over medium heat and sauté until softened (3-5 minutes).³
3. Add the rice, water, greens, mushrooms, and chicken (along with all of its marinade) to the pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
4. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until rice is tender (15-20 minutes).
5. Remove from heat, fluff rice, and allow to stand, covered, for 10 minutes.
6. Sprinkle with green onions and serve.

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¹ Not double. I just nudged the rice up by 1/3. But, honestly, for the amount of everything else that I had in the pot, it might've been better not to scale the rice up after all. It was tasty this way, but definitely could've used more mushrooms and greens. Which the recipe write-up reflects. ^Back
2 I used light soy here because the recipe didn't specify and it was what I had easily to hand but, having tasted it, I think that dark soy (or a blend of dark and light) would work better than light alone. ^Back
3 The original recipe didn't call for any onion or garlic and I didn't use any this time. But, having tasted it, I think some more aromatics would go nicely, so I've added them to the recipe as an optional extra. ^Back

I had to fudge this one slightly. It was meant to be done with bananas, blueberries, soft tofu, and orange juice concentrate. We didn't have any orange juice concentrate, but we did have some nice honey Greek yogurt that needed to be used up. So I swapped that in instead. Obviously it's a very different flavour, but it still gives a bit of acidity and a bit of sweetness. Not in the same proportions and not with the same flavours, but it got the job done. And, honestly, I suspect the yogurt version is probably a bit healthier as well.

This worked out quite well. It provided something to round out the breakfast this morning, since we didn't have enough pancakes left to feed everybody. It used up some of the ridiculous pile of tofu from the fridge. And it let me easily say "sure, no problem!" when the Kidlet requested a smoothie with her pancakes this morning. And, even more importantly, Reiver and the Kidlet both seemed to enjoy them.

Banana-Blueberry Smoothie

Slightly adapted from The Big Book of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstedt

Ingredients

• 150g soft tofu
• 3/4 c. honey or vanilla Greek yogurt
• 1/2 c. frozen blueberries
• 2 frozen bananas
• 1 c. milk

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients and purée until smooth.
2. Pour into glasses and serve.

I was planning on doing carrot-zucchini latkes for breakfast this morning. But the zucchini wasn't a great price this week, so I decided to save it for another time. Which is all well and good, except it left me with a hole in my meal plan.

After some frantic rifling through cookbooks, I eventually settled on this pancake recipe. It's not super substantial, but it was tasty and we had all the bits readily to hand. And that was the important bit this morning!

I ended up using some horopito-infused honey as the honey component of this recipe and I think it worked quite nicely. That said, regular honey will work just fine too. I just used the horopito honey because we had it and I thought it would complement the other spices well. (Which it did.) The slight peppery taste worked well with the coriander and cinnamon in the batter.

Spiced Whole Wheat Pancakes with Nuts

Slightly adapted from The Big Book of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstedt

Ingredients

Pancakes

• 300g whole wheat flour
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. coriander seeds, ground
• 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 2 c. milk
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 c. oil
• 3 Tbsp. honey
• 1/2 c. chopped walnuts, divided

Cinnamon Honey

• 1/4 c. honey
• 1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp. butter

Directions

1. Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, and salt and mix well.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the milk and mix in the oil and honey.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir to combine.
4. Mix in half of the walnuts.
5. Heat the pan over medium-low heat.
6. Add a little butter if necessary.
7. Scoop a few portions of batter into the pan, using ~1/4 c. for each pancake.
8. Cook until bubbles form and edges look dry.
9. Flip and continue cooking until browned on both sides and cooked through.
10. Transfer cooked pancakes to a plate and repeat with remaining batter.
11. Meanwhile, gently heat the remaining honey and mix in the cinnamon and butter. Stir to combine.
12. Serve pancakes topped with cinnamon honey and reserved walnuts.

Beans are in season! And corn. And all sorts of other lovely stuff. But today I'm talking about the beans.

When they're lovely and fresh like this, they really don't need much done to them. They're great enjoyed raw (maybe with a little dip or dressing on the side). Or just quickly steamed or sautéed.

This recipe actually only called for a bit of salt and oil, but I really love garlicky green beans, so I added just a touch of garlic paste to them as well.

I also cooked them for way less time than the recipe called for. It suggested blanching them in salted water for 5 minutes before sautéing them with an alarming amount of salt. I cut the boiling time down to ~90 seconds, used only a small amount of salt, and, as noted, added a bit of garlic to them mix as well. They came out great! I mean, they weren't the star of the show or anything, but they were very nice and everyone seemed to enjoy them. So that's a success in my books!

Sautéed Green Beans

Slightly adapted from Vegetable of the Day by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

• 250g fresh green beans, ends trimmed
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. garlic paste
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt

Directions

1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add the beans.
2. Boil for 1-2 minutes, then drain and shock under cold water.
3. Heat the oil over medium heat.
4. Add the beans, garlic, and salt and sautée until beans begin to brown slightly (3-5 minutes).

I went slightly off-script for this one. The recipe calls for banana, pineapple, and mango for the fruit and then vanilla yogurt and orange juice as the liquid. I found a bag of frozen "tropical fruit blend" at the grocery store yesterday. It did contain pineapple and mango, but it also had a lot of strawberry and honeydew in the mix. I figured that sounded tasty and let me buy only one bag of frozen fruit rather than two, so I just rolled with it. As for the liquids... We already had a bunch of really nice honey yogurt, so I opted to use that with a little vanilla extract mixed in. And for the orange juice... I did juice the orange that we had, but it didn't produce quite enough, so I just rounded it out with a bit of milk and called it a day. So, not quite the smoothie of the recipe, but good nonetheless.

Tropical Smoothie

Slightly adapted from The Breakfast Bible by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

• 1 banana
• 2 c. frozen fruit (preferably a 3:1 mix of mango and pineapple)¹
• 1/2 c. honey yogurt
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2-3/4 c. orange juice and/or milk

Directions

1. Combine ingredients in blender and purée until smooth.
2. Add more liquid as needed to achieve desired consistency.
3. Pour into glasses and serve.

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¹ I think mine was more like 8:6:3:3 strawberries to honeydew to mango to pineapple. ^Back

I was dead tired yesterday. Luckily we still had some leftovers for dinner. So all I needed to do was whip up some sort of vegetable side to go with it. I had a big bag of minced spinach in the freezer and I'd just restocked on cream, so that made this an easy choice.

It wasn't a phenomenal dish, but it wasn't bad either. And it did the job of putting some green on our plates. And I cut the cream with a bit of milk, so I didn't even feel too guilty about eating it!

The original recipe was written for fresh baby spinach, but I didn't really want to commit half a kilo of baby spinach to it. As far as I'm concerned, this is what frozen spinach was made for: being used in large quantities on short notice.

Creamed Spinach with Lemon

Slightly adapted from Vegetable of the Day by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

• 1 lemon
• 1/2 c. heavy (35%) cream or half-and-half (10% MF)
• 450g frozen chopped spinach
• 1 tsp. sugar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Use a vegetable peeler to cut a 5cm long strip of lemon zest off of the lemon and add it to the cream.
2. Bring the cream to a simmer over medium-low heat.
3. Simmer, uncovered, until reduced by half.
4. Meanwhile, heat the spinach over medium-low heat until thawed.
5. Sprinkle in the sugar and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Continue cooking the spinach until any excess liquid has evaporated.
7. Grate the lemon zest from half of the remaining lemon and add it to the spinach. (Reserve the remaining lemon for another use.)
8. Once the cream has thickened, add the spinach to it and stir to mix.
9. Cook until heated through (2-3 minutes).

We all wanted dessert the other day. I was thinking of doing up some grilled bananas with chocolate and chopped nuts. But then Reiver mentioned that he could really go for some bananas and custard. Except... we were all out of custard.

We did have milk, sugar, and eggs though. So I reasoned that it wouldn't be that much trouble to make some custard.

But then I got to flipping through my cookbooks and found this banana butterscotch pudding recipe. And we had (almost) all the bits. And it sounded fun. And Reiver and I are both butterscotch fans. So... wins all 'round!

I say almost all of the ingredients, because we didn't actually have any vanilla wafers. What we did have though, was Gingernuts! And I reasoned that a) using butterscotch pudding rather than vanilla was already a deviation from the "traditional" combination and b) ginger would go quite nicely with both the banana and the butterscotch flavours. And they did, indeed, go very well together!

Banana Butterscotch Pudding

Slightly adapted from Dessert of the Day by Kim Laidlaw

Ingredients

• 6 large egg yolks¹
• 40g cornstarch (cornflour)
• 3 c. milk, divided
• 70g butter
• 250g sugar
• 1/4 c. water
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3-4 bananas, peeled and sliced
• 4-6 Gingernuts, crumbled
• whipped cream, to serve

Directions

1. Mix the egg yolks with the cornstarch and 1/2 c. of the milk and set aside.
2. Heat the remaining 2 1/2 c. of milk with the butter until steaming. Cover and keep warm.
3. Meanwhile, combine the sugar and water over high heat.
4. Stir constantly until sugar has just melted.
5. From this point on, DO NOT STIR the sugar!
6. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook, swirling often, until caramel turns golden.
7. Remove from heat immediately and carefully pour in the milk mixture. It will bubble and steam vigorously, so just do a little at a time initially.
8. Whisk until bubbling subsides and mixture is thoroughly combined.
9. Whisk the egg mixture to make sure the cornstarch hasn't settled out.
10. Slowly pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture while whisking to temper the eggs.
11. Return the custard to medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened.
12. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
13. Spoon layers of pudding, banana slices, and crumbled biscuits either into one large dish or several smaller ones.
14. Once pudding has cooled, add a generous dollop of whipped cream on top and serve.

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¹ I actually went with 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg for mine. I still found the finished pudding lovely and rich, so I'm not sad about saving a few eggs by doing it that way. ^Back